Pashto as a language and Pashtoon
culture as a whole are on the verge of retreat. Scholars are lamenting the fact
that there are millions of Pashto speakers in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province and the
adjoining tribal areas but out of these millions hardly few hundred can write
what they speak. It`s so gloomy that we announce for funeral and weddings in
Pashto but when it comes to writing the same announcement, we display it in
Urdu or English not because no one will understand it if we wrote in our mother
tongue but the fact that we can`t write it.
It seems now a capricious desire to
introduce Pashto as the medium of instruction in educational institutions in pashtoon
majority areas and it sounds babbling, something illogical and a conspiracy to
drag us back to the stone-age. Credit must be given to the education system and
the perpetual brainwashing of our young lot over the years. It has been
computed in our mind that if we started writing Pashto or start reading it, we
will be tagged backwards, orthodox and off the trend people.
Ignorance about our language in the
written form (literature) has led us to face many repercussions. We have slowly forgotten
what are our actual values, norms, traditions and dress codes. Scholar says
that culture and traditions are not static and they should change for a good
reason but not humiliated. We observed a
practical experience of this on the occasion of “ Kaliwal Day 20th
February 2014” at the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, (Photos).
There is no doubt that it was an
honest idea to hold such an event to revitalize our dress codes specifically
and show our fellows what and how do we look in our rural areas. The organizer- Sajid Khan Salaar -must be applauded for coming up with it and putting an untiring effort to give
it practical shape and holding it successfully. Organizing an event like this require a lot of energy and dedication and he and his team delivered it.
But as the saying goes “Kam Qaam Ta
Che Khapala Jaba Spaka shi Hagha Qaam spak Shi, Ao Kam Qaam Na Che Khapala Jaba
Wraka Shi Hagha Qaam Wrak Shi” ( The nation who humiliate their mother tongue,
gets humiliated as a nation in the end and the nation who have lost their
mother tongue are lost from the globe). There were attempts that hurt the
feelings of our rural students-Those hailing from villages and that too showed
that we pashtoon as a nation are lost. I will try to mention few of them.
Girl Dressed as Guy
What kind of villages has that
tradition? A girl who was dressed in men`s clothes, had a French cut and was wearing
chitrali Pakol (guy hat). I was told by my friend that she is a girl and that
she is not even a Pashtoon. There were mixed feelings; has someone in our
pashtoon students told this girl that pashtoon girls in villages dress like
that? Who is she humiliating, herself or that it is a deliberate concoction that
pashtoon women`s beauty has lost the feather over time? I don`t know may be in
her village women would dress up like pashtoon men to scare their men.
The Burqa Guy
Pashtoon
consider their honour and dignity supreme to everything. They never want their
women to be humiliated and insulted openly. Every pashtoon is strictly vigilant
to his family honor and neither does he interfere in the affairs of others. Rural Pashtoons have been Islamized since the Afghan war starting
in the 80s, the imposition of Deobandi narrative of Islam in Pukhtunkhwa and
FATA in particular, caged women in the walled houses and if they had to go out
they were asked to wear shuttlecock Burqa. Since then it has become part of our
women dress. But when they go out despite that they are covered from head to
toe, men have to bow their heads and not even come closer to them-something our
Pakhutnwali teaches us.
So coming to this guy who has come
in the disguise of a woman (wearing a shuttlecock Burqa), there were many
shameful and vulgar scenes where she (he) was
surrounded by her (his) male friends and were teasing her (him). Imagine if
that happened to a woman in village and then think of the aftermaths. Well,
kid! Hundred will die and the families of the boys would carry that shame from
generations to generations.
This does not mean that I support
the notion that women should wear shuttlecock Burqa. It is neither our cultural
dress nor an accurate way of Islamic Pardah but those wearing it do not deserve
the treatment you showed us.
There were many other things like
having tails of antimony (surma) as long as the border of the ears, wearing
Shalwar as short as skirts, wearing waskat (waist coat) as short as to the
armpits and so on. These idiosyncratic and evasive steps ruined and sabotaged the
positive aspects of the event and hence less attention was paid to the actual cultural
dresses.
I would like to suggest few things
to the management of the event and administration of institute of management
Sciences.
(1)
Change
the name of the event from Kaliwal Day to Cultural exhibition. Because the word
Kaliwal is too much stereotypical to the urban masses. Commit something
foolish, say or do something which is off the trend and you will be tagged as
Kaliwal “Mara Da Sa Kaliwal Harkatona Kay”. So this Kaliwal term has many
implied and implicit meanings which are derogatory mainly.
(2)
Poetic
symposium (Mushaira) and essay competition on social topics in Pashto and
Hindko should be held at the premises as language is the soul probably for
every culture. Young poets and writers must be encouraged to participate in
order to keep alive our regional languages.
(3)
The organizers
and administration should ensure that no such attempts are put forth as
mentioned above by having a pre-Cultural Exhibition seminar, where students
must be shown what their dresses used to be, how dresses of one district/division
are different from the other. This would definitely help the urban students who
have moved to the cities from villages decades ago and never looked back since
then.
(4)
Demos,
Drama and video competitions should be arranged to highlight both positive and
negative aspects of the non-written tradition life style of the indigenous pashtoon
people which include Melamstiya( hospitality), Badal (revenge), Turah(
Bravery), Ghairat ( Respect, honor and courage), Nang ( honor), Namus
(Protection of women) and Nanawatay
(Sanctuary).
Salute to all the tribal students specifically those hailing from Waziristan who were
dressed elegantly.
Note: We discussed this whole thing in friends` circles, in class rooms and the decision was to give a written response. Please don`t get offended and consider it a humble request instead.
